Who Are You? Read online

  Their hands have met in the darkness. His touch is so comforting and reassuring to her that it absorbs the attention she ought to be giving to what he says. Now, however, her hand is relinquished. The blur of his white shirt, which she's just able to make out while he's standing in front of her, rapidly recedes, melting into the darkness without a trace.

  She is left alone with the frogs, whose chorus is mounting to a crescendo. It's quite impossible for her to see which way Suede Boots has gone, even though she leans far over the rail under the trailing orchids to peer into the hot black night.

  20

  Now it becomes almost too hot to live as the monsoon approaches. Each afternoon great menacing masses of cloud gather and roof over the world, which swelters beneath, in burning suspense and tension.

  The girl is still not acclimatized, and can't stand this terrific heat, which keeps her awake at night, so that she's always tired. If only she could go to some cool place ! But, in spite of her longing to get away, she does nothing about it, feeling vaguely that the time hasn't come yet.

  Suede Boots has hung a blue scarf on the tree to remind her that kind people exist who will help and accept her. She remembers him saying, ' Don't worry — all my family will love you.' She has such a craving for love that she often dreams of staying with them, and even thinks she will really go sometime — at some dim future date. But, as the torrid days slowly pass, the idea grows more and more dreamlike, and the people seem less and less real. Every day she believes in them a little less, since he can't come any more to talk to her and convince her of their reality.

  Her husband doesn't talk to her either. For days at a time she speaks to no one except the servants. She is always lonely, and always seems to be waiting, but isn't sure whether she's waiting for the monsoon, or to escape, or just for another day. All the days are the same to her now, and they are all empty of everything but discomfort. The heat is an abominable infliction that takes away all her vitality.

  Tonight she's entirely alone in the house. Dog Head is out in the car. The servants have gone, and won't come back till the morning. It is late, but the night seems to get hotter, even hotter than the day. The air is so oppressive that she can hardly move. At last she drags herself up to her room, takes her clothes off, and, stunned into apathy, sits on the bed under the fan, doing nothing. The dim light flickers the whole time. Her head aches, her eyes burn, she can't make the effort of reading a book. Lightning is flickering too on the backs of her silver brushes, lying there like relics of a lost life. She's dead tired, but knows she won't be able to sleep — in any case, it's far too hot to lie down. She has the sensation of dropping into a great steamy tank of asphyxiating heat.

  Suddenly she comes to with a violent start, just as her husband appears in the room without warning. His hostile overbearing face comes towards her, he is flourishing a sheet of paper, demanding, 'What's the meaning of this ?' as he waves it in front of her.

  She recognizes the letter that came from the university some time ago how on earth can he have discovered it in its secret hiding place ? she wonders, too dazed and disconcerted to answer. 'So you're planning to rat on me,' she hears next. The word rat makes her shudder, uttered in that bullying voice. But, still half stupefied, she only shrinks away from him without speaking.

  It's not the letter he's so angry about really. But she has no conception of the outrage she's committed by making a fool of him — as he thinks — by her friendship with Suede Boots, and not even apologizing for it. It never occurs to her, in her innocence, that she owes him an apology. She's quite unaware of how insulted he feels; and her oblivious attitude infuriates him still more.

  'Why don't you answer?' he shouts, grasping her arms so violently that, unprepared, she slides off the edge of the bed, falling against him. He has been drinking as usual. She smells the whisky on his breath and twists her head away, trying to push him back. But he won't release her, roused by the contact with her nakedness. She feels lust rising in him, which is mainly the lust to conquer her, and starts struggling. His blue, blazing, lustful eyes are quite close to hers; now, for the first time, she sees in them something dangerous and demented, reminding her of a mad dog, and strains away from him with all her strength. But of course she has no chance against him. He is far too strong. Overpowering her easily, he throws her on to the bed. Then down comes his big, sweating body on top of her, crushing her flat. Thunder crashes at the same moment, and, in her confused state, it's as if the thunder has hurled itself on her, rolling its immensity over her and holding her down, while lightning transfixes her with a piercing pain. She can't breathe — the man's mouth, fixed on hers, stops her breathing. She's suffocating . . . dying . . . she's being murdered . . .

  Just when she can't endure it another second, Dog Head removes his weight from her and stands up by the bed. Dimmed by the lightning, the flickering light gives him a frightening, unreal, unfamiliar aspect that's hardly human. He stands over her with that rabid expression, showing his teeth in a mad dog's grin. In the midst of the atrocious heat she shivers with sudden chill, seeing him, not as her husband at all, but as some nightmare horror — a dog-headed man. Suddenly she's panic-stricken — she must escape immediately, and at all costs . . .

  His appetite and his rage sated for the moment, the husband goes off for a drink, leaving her alone. She gets her clothes on somehow and rushes out, across the centre room, down the stairs, the slight sound of her steps drowned by the storm. In her panic, she has only one thought : to get out of the house, and away from the man who's half nightmare. Thunder goes on all the time. The lightning keeps stabbing at the windows, as if trying to reach her. A blinding flash stops her as she gets to the door, ripping the sky apart, followed by a tremendous thunderclap, shaking the house.

  But now she abruptly returns to normal. Panic leaves her as soon as she opens the door and sees the way open before her. No longer under such desperate pressure of need to be gone, she pauses in the porch, noticing, with amazement, that what Suede Boots said is quite true - all she has to do is to walk out of the place, exactly as he always told her. How simple it seems. The thing she's thought almost impossible, when it comes to the point, is really perfectly easy.

  But she still doesn't move, though nothing to do with the storm keeps her standing there: perhaps it's her belief in her own unchangeable bad luck; or perhaps a constitutional fear of any decisive step. Holding on to the door so that it shan't slam shut in the wind, she turns her head and looks towards the stairs behind her, as though she might decide to go back to her room after all.

  Then she turns again, and another flash zigzags down the sky, illuminating the compound with white incandescence, showing the palm tree bent over in a thin impossible arc, its topmost leaves sweeping the ground. It looks like a hallucination. Everything out there has the same fantastic, improbable aspect, as if it were part of a fever-dream. The well-known landmarks are hardly recognizable.

  Her eyes, dazzled by the livid glare of the lightning, suddenly start to search the weird scene with a new, acute urgency. On the spur of the moment, she's made up her mind that chance shall decide her fate. She will go if she succeeds in seeing the scarf before the lurid light expires. Otherwise she'll stay.

  In his room, Dog Head drinks steadily for some time. A lizard drops its tail near his glass, and he jumps up indignantly to pursue it. It has disappeared. But now that he's interrupted his drinking he feels in need of an outlet for the violence drink always builds up in him.

  He takes his racquet into the next room, where the combination of lightning and the weak electricity greatly increases the difficulties of the rat game. Moreover, he himself is not completely steady on his feet, and is apt to misjudge distances. He lashes out wildly at each rat that shows itself, missing more often than not.

  The stifling heat seems to be inside him, rather than out. Everything is dark in his mind, which is filled with furious resentment against his wife. He's really hitting out at her, not the rats, as he
slashes the racquet at them with all his strength. He shouts to her to come and watch him playing, but of course she doesn't reply. He would go and drag her out of her room, if he were not fully occupied here. Playing in this extravagant, imprecise way, he soon exhausts himself; sweat is running off him like water.

  Though he won't admit it, he's really had more than enough of the game, when an unusually large rat comes on the scene, and eludes him persistently, almost driving him crazy. At last he corners it, and, with a yell of triumph, brings the racquet down in a vicious drive. But once again he miscalculates. Lunging forward, he staggers, losing his balance, starting to fall, and, to save himself, clutches at some piece of furniture, which tilts over on top of him, bearing him to the ground with it.

  It is not the ponderous, blood-red wardrobe made in the jail, but a light affair constructed of laths. Nevertheless, he cries out in a loud and agonized voice for someone to help him. No one answers. Nobody comes. The servants don't hear, or don't want to hear.

  His wife must have heard surely she's bound to come to the rescue. His rage dissolves in self-pity, he whimpers drunkenly to himself, lying under the cupboard, because she doesn't appear either. For a time, he can think of nothing but his own pathetic position. Nobody cares that he's crushed under an oppressive weight, in darkness and misery.

  As soon as he makes the effort, of course, he dislodges the cupboard quite easily. Immediately then his anger revives, flaring up again, as he gets to his feet, bruised and shaken, and makes for the girl's room. It's absolutely intolerable that she should have left him lying there helpless all that time without lifting a finger, and he means to take some violent revenge. He will do something terrible to her — perhaps kill her.

  All at once, just as he gets to the door, his strength and his furious anger desert him together; he seems to fall in on himself, to disintegrate almost, and slowly subsides to the floor, overcome by profound exhaustion.

  The night is almost over, though he has lost all sense of time. The thunder recedes into the distance and slowly dies out. He listens intently in the new stillness, but there's no sound or sign of life on the other side of the door.

  This is the point when the clouds start to break up, leaving a gap in the east, where soon the sun will appear. The electricity expired in the house long ago. But now the black window squares are growing brighter. A vague huddled shape, indicated by the pallor of his shorts and his naked flesh, the man half lies on the floor, his head and shoulders propped against the wall, between the wardrobe and the door of his wife's room. He is motionless, except when his chin intermittently drops on his chest as he falls into a brief doze, or wakes with a sudden start.

  He does not move from this spot, and, whenever he remembers to do so, goes on listening. The door flaps constitute no sort of a barrier against noise; yet all this time there has been no sound on the other side loud enough to reach him. The occupant of the room must be keeping quiet deliberately; or else sleeping soundly. It is also possible that she is not there at all and that the room is empty.

  At length Dog Head leaves his place at the door without investigating the room beyond. Too tired to care about the girl now, he falls on his own bed, and is asleep instantly, with his mouth slightly open.

  The light intensifies outside the windows, which are already luminous. Suddenly the sun leaps into the sky, gilding the tops of the tamarinds and the highest point of the roof. At once the brain-fever birds fill the air with their monotonous cries, as if they had never stopped mechanically calling out the eternal question no one will ever answer.

  In their quarters, the servants are still sleeping off the excitements of the night. The dilapidated house stands silent, as if deserted, in the almost cool air of daybreak; as though it were already an abandoned ruin, empty, and fallen into decay. The rooms appear as so many black holes through the unshuttered, wide open windows.